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William MacLeod Raine was an American author who wrote classic adventure novels about the Wild West.
William MacLeod Raine was an American author who wrote classic adventure novels about the Wild West.
Day was breaking in the Panhandle. The line-rider finished his breakfast of buffalo-hump, coffee, and biscuits. He had eaten heartily, for it would be long after sunset before he touched food again.
Cheerfully and tunelessly he warbled a cowboy ditty as he packed his supplies and prepared to go.
"Oh, it's bacon and beans most every day,
I'd as lief be eatin' prairie hay."
While he washed his dishes in the fine sand and rinsed them in the current of the creek he announced jocundly to a young world glad with spring:
"I'll sell my outfit soon as I can,
Won't punch cattle for no damn' man."
The tin cup beat time against the tin plate to accompany a kind of shuffling dance. Jack Roberts was fifty miles from nowhere, alone on the desert, but the warm blood of youth set his feet to moving. Why should he not dance? He was one and twenty, stood five feet eleven in his socks, and weighed one hundred and seventy pounds of bone, sinew, and well-packed muscle. A son of blue skies and wide, wind-swept spaces, he had never been ill in his life. Wherefore the sun-kissed world looked good to him.
He mounted a horse picketed near the camp and rode out to a remuda of seven cow-ponies grazing in a draw. Of these he roped one and brought it back to camp, where he saddled it with deft swiftness.
The line-rider swung to the saddle and put his pony at a jog-trot. He topped a hill and looked across the sunlit mesas which rolled in long swells far as the eye could see. The desert flowered gayly with the purple, pink, and scarlet blossoms of the cacti and with the white, lilylike buds of the Spanish bayonet. The yucca and the prickly pear were abloom. He swept the panorama with trained eyes. In the distance a little bunch of antelope was moving down to water in single file. On a slope two miles away grazed a small herd of buffalo. No sign of human habitation was written on that vast solitude of space.
The cowboy swung to the south and held a steady road gait. With an almost uncanny accuracy he recognized all signs that had to do with cattle. Though cows, half hidden in the brush, melted into the color of the hillside, he picked them out unerringly. Brands, at a distance so great that a tenderfoot could have made of them only a blur, were plain as a primer to him.
Cows that carried on their flanks the A T O, he turned and started northward. As he returned, he would gather up these strays and drive them back to their own range. For in those days, before the barbed wire had reached Texas and crisscrossed it with boundary lines, the cowboy was a fence more mobile than the wandering stock.
It was past noon when Roberts dropped into a draw where an immense man was lying sprawled under a bush. The recumbent man was a mountain of flesh; how he ever climbed to a saddle was a miracle; how a little cow-pony carried him was another. Yet there was no better line-rider in the Panhandle than Jumbo Wilkins.
"'Lo, Texas," the fat man greeted.
The young line-rider had won the nickname of "Texas" in New Mexico a year or two before by his aggressive championship of his native State. Somehow the sobriquet had clung to him even after his return to the Panhandle.
"'Lo, Jumbo," returned the other. "How?"
"Fat like a match. I'm sure losin' flesh. Took up another notch in my belt yestiddy."
Roberts shifted in the saddle, resting his weight on the horn and the ball of one foot for ease. He was a slim, brown youth, hard as nails and tough as whipcord. His eyes were quick and wary. In spite of the imps of mischief that just now lighted them, one got an impression of strength. He might or might not be, in the phrase of the country, a "bad hombre," but it was safe to say he was an efficient one.
"Quick consumption, sure," pronounced the younger man promptly. "You don't look to me like you weigh an ounce over three hundred an' fifty pounds. Appetite kind o' gone?"
"You're damn whistlin'. I got an ailment, I tell you, Tex. This mo'nin' I didn't eat but a few slices of bacon an' some lil' steaks an' a pan or two o' flapjacks an' mebbe nine or ten biscuits. Afterward I felt kind o' bloated like. I need some sa'saparilla. Now, if I could make out to get off for a few days-"
"You could get that sarsaparilla across the bar at the Bird Cage, couldn't you, Jumbo?" the boy grinned.
The whale of a man looked at him reproachfully. "You never seen me shootin' up no towns or raisin' hell when I was lit up. I can take a drink or leave it alone."
"That's right too. Nobody lets it alone more than you do when it can't be got. I've noticed that."
"You cayn't devil me, boy. I was punchin' longhorns when yore mammy was paddlin' you for stealin' the sugar. Say, that reminds me. I'm plumb out o' sugar. Can you loan me some till Pedro gits around? I got to have sugar or I begin to fall off right away," the big man whined.
The line-riders chatted casually of the topics that interest men in the land of wide, empty frontiers. Of Indians they had something to say, of their diminishing grub supply more. Jumbo mentioned that he had found an A T O cow dead by a water-hole. They spoke incidentally of the Dinsmore gang, a band of rustlers operating in No Man's Land. They had little news of people, since neither of them had for three weeks seen another human being except Quint Sullivan, the line-rider who fenced the A T O cattle to the east of Roberts.
Presently Roberts nodded a good-bye and passed again into the solitude of empty spaces. The land-waves swallowed him. Once more he followed draws, crossed washes, climbed cow-backed hills, picking up drift-cattle as he rode.
It was late afternoon when he saw a thin spiral of smoke from a rise of ground. Smoke meant that some human being was abroad in the land, and every man on the range called for investigation. The rider moved forward to reconnoiter.
He saw a man, a horse, a cow, a calf, and a fire. When these five things came together, it meant that somebody was branding. The present business of Roberts was to find out what brand was on the cow and what one was being run on the flank of the calf. He rode forward at a slow canter.
The man beside the fire straightened. He took off his hat and swept it in front of him in a semicircle from left to right. The line-rider understood the sign language of the plains. He was being "waved around." The man was serving notice upon him to pass in a wide circle. It meant that the dismounted man did not intend to let himself be recognized. The easy deduction was that he was a rustler.
The cowboy rode steadily forward. The man beside the fire picked up a rifle lying at his feet and dropped a bullet a few yards in front of the advancing man.
Roberts drew to a halt. He was armed with a six-shooter, but a revolver was of no use at this distance. For a moment he hesitated. Another bullet lifted a spurt of dust almost at his horse's feet.
The line-rider waited for no more definite warning. He waved a hand toward the rustler and shouted down the wind: "Some other day." Quickly he swung his horse to the left and vanished into an arroyo. Then, without an instant's loss of time, he put his pony swiftly up the draw toward a "rim-rock" edging a mesa. Over to the right was Box Ca?on, which led to the rough lands of a terrain unknown to Roberts. It was a three-to-one chance that the rustler would disappear into the ca?on.
The young man rode fast, putting his bronco at the hills with a rush. He was in a treeless country, covered with polecat brush. Through this he plunged recklessly, taking breaks in the ground without slackening speed in the least.
Near the summit of the rise Roberts swung from the saddle and ran forward through the brush, crouching as he moved. With a minimum of noise and a maximum of speed he negotiated the thick shrubbery and reached the gorge.
He crept forward cautiously and looked down. Through the shin-oak which grew thick on the edge of the bluff he made out a man on horseback driving a calf. The mount was a sorrel with white stockings and a splash of white on the nose. The distance was too great for Roberts to make out the features of the rider clearly, though he could see the fellow was dark and slender.
The line-rider watched him out of sight, then slithered down the face of the bluff to the sandy wash. He knelt down and studied intently the hoofprints written in the soil. They told him that the left hind hoof of the animal was broken in an odd way.
Jack Roberts clambered up the steep edge of the gulch and returned to the cow-pony waiting for him with drooping hip and sleepy eyes.
"Oh, you Two Bits, we'll amble along and see where our friend is headin' for."
He picked a way down into the ca?on and followed the rustler. At the head of the gulch the man on the sorrel had turned to the left. The cowboy turned also in that direction. A sign by the side of the trail confronted him.
THIS IS PETE DINSMORE'S ROAD-
TAKE ANOTHER
"The plot sure thickens," grinned Jack. "Reckon I won't take Pete's advice to-day. It don't listen good."
He spoke aloud, to himself or to his horse or to the empty world at large, as lonely riders often do on the plains or in the hills, but from the heavens above an answer dropped down to him in a heavy, masterful voice:
"Git back along that trail pronto!"
Roberts looked up. A flat rock topped the bluff above. From the edge of it the barrel of a rifle projected. Behind it was a face masked by a bandana handkerchief. The combination was a sinister one.
If the line-rider was dismayed or even surprised, he gave no evidence of it.
"Just as you say, stranger. I reckon you're callin' this dance," he admitted.
"You'll be lucky if you don't die of lead-poisonin' inside o' five minutes. No funny business! Git!"
The cowboy got. He whirled his pony in its tracks and sent it jogging down the back trail. A tenderfoot would have taken the gulch at breakneck speed. Most old-timers would have found a canter none too fast. But Jack Roberts held to a steady road gait. Not once did he look back-but every foot of the way till he had turned a bend in the ca?on there was an ache in the small of his back. It was a purely sympathetic sensation, for at any moment a bullet might come crashing between the shoulders.
Once safely out of range the rider mopped a perspiring face.
"Wow! This is your lucky day, Jack. Ain't you got better sense than to trail rustlers with no weapon but a Sunday-School text? Well, here's hopin'! Maybe we'll meet again in the sweet by an' by. You never can always tell."
* * *
Tangled Trails A Western Detective Story by William MacLeod Raine
William Macleod Raine was a British-born American writer of Wild West fiction. Raine's stories of adventure during the famous, action-packed era of American history are still popular today. This edition of A Daughter of Raasay includes a table of contents.
William Macleod Raine was a British-born American writer of Wild West fiction. Raine's stories of adventure during the famous, action-packed era of American history are still popular today. This edition of The Highgrader includes a table of contents.
William MacLeod Raine was an American author who wrote classic adventure novels about the Wild West.
William Macleod Raine was a British-born American writer of Wild West fiction. Raine's stories of adventure during the famous, action-packed era of American history are still popular today. This edition of Crooked Trails and Straight includes a table of contents.
To most, Verena passed for a small-town clinic doctor; in truth, she worked quiet miracles. Three years after Isaac fell hopelessly for her and kept vigil through lonely nights, a crash left him in a wheelchair and stripped his memory. To keep him alive, Verena married him, only to hear, "I will never love you." She just smiled. "That works out-I'm not in love with you, either." Entangled in doubt, he recoiled from hope, yet her patience held him fast-kneeling to meet his eyes, palm warm on his hair, steadying him-until her glowing smile rekindled feelings he believed gone forever.
Abandoned as a child and orphaned by murder, Kathryn swore she'd reclaim every shred of her stolen birthright. When she returned, society called her an unpolished love-child, scoffing that Evan had lost his mind to marry her. Only Evan knew the truth: the quiet woman he cradled like porcelain hid secrets enough to set the city trembling. She doubled as a legendary healer, an elusive hacker, and the royal court's favorite perfumer. At meetings, the directors groaned at the lovey-dovey couple, "Does she really have to be here?" Evan shrugged. "Happy wife, happy life." Soon her masks fell, and those who sneered bowed in awe.
The day Raina gave birth should have been the happiest of her life. Instead, it became her worst nightmare. Moments after delivering their twins, Alexander shattered her heart-divorcing her and forcing her to sign away custody of their son, Liam. With nothing but betrayal and heartbreak to her name, Raina disappeared, raising their daughter, Ava, on her own.Years later, fate comes knocking when Liam falls gravely ill. Desperate to save his son, Alexander is forced to seek out the one person he once cast aside. Alexander finds himself face to face with the woman he underestimated, pleading for a second chance-not just for himself, but for their son. But Raina is no longer the same broken woman who once loved him.No longer the woman he left behind. She has carved out a new life-one built on strength, wealth, and a long-buried legacy she expected to uncover.Raina has spent years learning to live without him.The question is... Will she risk reopening old wounds to save the son she never got to love? or has Alexander lost her forever?
Janice, the long-forgotten legitimate heiress, made her way back to her family, pouring her heart into winning their hearts. Yet, she had to relinquish her very identity, her academic credentials, and her creative works to her foster sister. In return for her sacrifices, she found no warmth, only deeper neglect. Resolute, Janice vowed to cut off all emotional bonds. Transformed, she now stood as a master of martial arts, adept in eight languages, an esteemed medical expert, and a celebrated designer. With newfound resolve, she declared, "From this day forward, no one in this family shall cross me."
Dayna had worshiped her husband, only to watch him strip her late mother's estate and lavish devotion on another woman. After three miserable years, he discarded her, and she lay broken-until Kristopher, the man she once betrayed, dragged her from the wreckage. He now sat in a wheelchair, eyes like tempered steel. She offered a pact: she would mend his legs if he helped crush her ex. He scoffed, yet signed on. As their ruthless alliance caught fire, he uncovered her other lives-healer, hacker, pianist-and her numb heart stirred. But her groveling ex crawled back. "Dayna, you were my wife! How could you marry someone else? Come back!"
In the eighteen years of her life, Brianna had endured relentless abuse from her family, living in constant fear. One fateful day, two dignified figures approached her and revealed a shocking truth: she was their long-lost daughter, heiress to the wealthiest family in the city-the Owens. Desperate for love and acceptance, Brianna hoped to escape her past. Instead, she fell victim to Cassie, a cunning impostor who manipulated their parents against her while feigning distress. Rather than forging a connection with her real family, Brianna found herself betrayed and isolated. When a car accident left Brianna in a vegetative state, she found herself able to listen to everything around her, though unable to respond. Bitterly, she realized her parents didn't care for her; they visited just once. A month later, Cassie visited, disconnecting the ventilator before leaning in to whisper coldly, "Goodbye, my dear sister. You shouldn't have come back. You are meant for that despicable, wretched family." Somehow, fate granted Brianna a second chance. Reborn and fueled by rage, she vowed to make everyone who had wronged her pay dearly. This time, she would seize the life that had been stolen from her.
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